An Evernote Free Basic Account is Now Basically Useless

While a free Evernote "Basic" account remains free of charge, going forward note syncing across devices (the app's most useful feature) will be limited to just two devices a year. In addition, the monthly upload limit for free users will be reduced to just 60MB a month. That's not too bad if you're only making text notes, but anyone uploading images or audio will feel the pinch.

To make matters worse, those now considering taking on a paid-for premium account will have to contend with a price hike too.

While Evernote is yet to detail the specific effect on UK prices, US dollar prices raise so that the Plus tier is now sat at $3.99 per month (up from $2.99) or $34.99 per year, with the Premium plan going up from $5.99 per month to $7.99 per month, or $69.99 per year. The breakdown of what each offers can be found here.

It'll come as little consolation that free account users can now make use of Evernote's passcode lock feature in the mobile app.

"We don’t take any change to our pricing model lightly, and we never take you for granted. Our goal is to continue improving Evernote for the long-term, investing in our core products to make them more powerful and intuitive while also delivering often-requested new features," said Evernote CEO Chris O'Neill on the company's blog.

"But that requires a significant investment of energy, time, and money. We’re asking those people who get the most value from Evernote to help us make that investment and, in return, to reap the benefits that result.

"Evernote isn’t a vast corporation, and note-taking isn’t a sideline for us. It’s what we do, and we strive to do it better than anyone else. We hope you’ll continue to capture your thoughts and develop your ideas with us."

As a regular Evernote user, I'm pretty gutted about this. I recommend the app and service to everyone, but I suppose that was always based on the fact of how good the free Basic account offering was. Looks like rival Google Keep – which remains free – is about to get a massive influx of new users then. [Evernote]